With this race, fanaticism in religion has never known a place. Rational and natural, they have ever worshipped with the heart and the attributes of their faith. Truth, sincerity, love, and mercy have ever marked their characters. Too honest to be superstitious, and too sincere to be hypocrites, the concentrated love of freedom unites the race, and the hatred of tyranny will stimulate the blood which shall retrieve it from the dominion of the baser blood now triumphant and rioting in the ruin they have wrought. In the beginning of the settlements, and as soon as fears of the inroads from the savages had subsided, attention was given to the selection of separate and extended homes over the country, to the opening of farms, and their cultivation. The first consideration was food and raiment. All of this was to be the production of the farm and home industry: grain enough was to be grown to serve the wants of the family for bread, and to feed the stock; for this was to furnish the meat, milk, and butter. Cotton enough to serve the wants of families, together with the wool from the flock, and some flax, were of prime consideration. All of this was prepared and manufactured into fabrics for clothing and bedding at home. The seed from the cotton was picked by hand; for, as yet, Whitney had not given them the cotton-gin. This work was imposed most generally upon the children of families, white and black, as a task at night, and which had to be completed before going to bed; an ounce was the usual task, which was weighed and spread before the fire; for it was most easily separated from the seed when warm and dry. Usually some petty rewards stimulated the work. In every family it was observed and commented upon, that these rewards excited the diligence of the white children, but were without a corresponding effect upon the black; and any one who has ever controlled the negro knows that his labor is only in proportion to the coercion used to enforce it. His capacity, physically, is equal to the white; but this cannot be bought, or he persuaded to exert it of himself, and is given only through punishment, or the fear of it. The removal of restraint is to him a license to laziness; and the hope of reward, or the cravings of nature, will only induce him to labor sufficiently to supply these for immediate and limited relief.